Monday, July 18, 2011

Discerning a basis for human rights and dignity

In her Opinion column, “The
Sacred and the Humane,” Anat Bletzki argues that human rights are properly
the domain of philosophical rather than theological ethics (New York Times,
July 17, 2011). Tellingly, she defines religion as “a system of myth and
ritual; it is a communal system of propositional attitudes — beliefs, hopes,
fears, desires — that are related to superhuman agents.” That definition
precludes much modern theology that has abandoned the idea of superhuman agents
as untenable.

Bletzki’s argument rejecting
religious ethics as a basis for human rights hinges upon her belief that
religious ethics is a system of command ethics: people do what God commands. In
addition to excluding major religions such as Theravadan Buddhism, her argument
has three major flaws.

First, God is internally
consistent, an assessment apparent by observing that God's handiwork appears
internally consistent, for example in both morality and natural processes. God
who authored life and imbued it with value does not contradict that by
directing Abraham to kill his son. Child abuse, in all of its forms and
instances, is inconsistent with respect the value of life. If God had told
Abraham to kill Isaac, the morally correct action for Abraham would have been
to kill his son. Biblical stories that portray God as inconsistent reflect
human rather than divine authorship.

Second, Bletzki, opting for
biblical literalism, minimizes the difficulty in discerning God's will.
Searching for inconsistencies within a religious tradition is a great way to
discover human bias. Searching across religions for consistent themes, such as
the worth of all humans, is a much better way to discern ethical guidance from
the one ultimate reality.

Third, Bletzki ignores the
possibility that the variety of philosophical justifications of human rights
reflect truth incorporated into the very design of creation by God. Thus, one
would expect philosophy and religion to converge on human rights, often finding
common ground. Religious ethics that insist on the particularities of their
tradition being God's dictates are as biased as philosophers who insist on the
particularities of their philosophy being right against all others. The
dichotomy that David Hume proposed between the natural and ethical may in fact
be false given the growing accumulation of biological data about the physical
basis for reciprocal altruism. (For more, cf. http://www.EthicalMusings.com).

4 comments:

Once one moves beyond easy-to-quote formalisms like the Golden Rule, one desires a comprehensive foundation for human rights and dignity -- which inevitably involve tradeoffs. Would humanity be better off if everyone were able to read and comprehend the Critique of Pure Reason? Possibly so, but that's not where humankind is -- or is likely to be, anytime soon. Religion's use of myth, metaphor, and induction can effectively communicate a basis for human rights and dignity that is accessible to the masses.

Chuck, you're right. To borrow a trite phrase, "the devil is in the details." My objection to Bletzki's essay is that she wants to put religious/theological ethics out of the conversation altogether. Philosophical ethics, like their religious counterparts, offer widely varying prescriptions of human behavior, finding common ground only with respect to the big picture. A primary influence on Kant, incidentally, was the Christian pietism of his parents. A careful reading of his work suggests that he was attempting to develop a Christian ethic without recourse to God.

The basis for human rights should be laid upon using common sense on which will be good for all regardless of religion, ethnicity, gender, etc. Though religion can be a good basis, some are just conflicting to some basics of common sense.